I was playing my Freddy today and noticed that the boiler room door started acting kind of inconstantly. Occasionally the door will not open (until maybe the next turn), but when you sink the shot the table goes bananas. It triggers some scoring event that causes all balls to fire, and if I hold the ball on my plunger the points just keep firing and firing. I did a switch test and all switches and optos appear to be fine. Has anybody seen this on their Freddy? Any idea what I should check?

Here is a video of what is happening: https://vid.me/FkUH

Figured I'd post a little update. I came back a few hours later and fired up my Freddy--to my surprise the game was working fine. I hadn't touched anything since last testing it out. Perhaps there is a loose connection?? I'll keep banging around on this, but thought I'd make the note in case anybody with some guidance has experienced this in the past.

Thanks for the help forensicd! The bolt definitely felt like it needed tightened. The boiler room door is going up higher than it did before and looks a lot better. I'm going to play it a bunch today to keep an eye on the weird scoring I was experiencing earlier, but hopefully this takes care of it! Thanks again!

Alright - plays much better and the boiler room door is acting as it should. I am noticing that occasionally I'm getting a "friend joined the nightmare" message on the DMD now and it spits 2-3 balls to the plunger. Not sure if I bumped something while tightening the door, but I'm in a much better spot than I was this morning! Anybody know what might be triggering the "friend joined the nightmare" message? The crazy multi-ball is fun, but it's clearly not supposed to be doing this (as evidenced by the fact that the 2 stacked balls can't plunge high enough to get into gameplay )

Ha, you might be right again. It's never done this before, but I'm watching some YouTube videos and see it happening on a couple other machines pretty quickly into game play (after hitting a boiler room shot). Maybe this is something that SHOULD have been happening, but wasn't until I fiddled around with the table? Shooter switch appears okay, so I'm not sure why I'm getting ball build up (it appears on the videos that other tables fire the multi-ball automatically whereas mine doesn't always do so). Still, I think I'm in good shape--just haven't seen how it is actually supposed to be playing until now!

Welp, looks like I was getting ahead of myself. I'm not sure why, but I'm firing up my Freddy again tonight and having the same problem. I pulled up the play field and made sure the nut was cranked on the boiler room door, but once I start I get crazy balls to plunger and points just start firing.

So at this point I've made sure that the boiler room door is tightened and the switch in the shooter lane is working correctly. Any other ideas, or maybe something I've missed on these two adjustments?

https://vid.me/e/Nr6E

I've done a switch test, but everything appears to be firing correctly (switches and optos). It's weird because when I start a game it's like the pin is hitting a switch constantly, but then I go into test and switches/optos work as expected.

I could try throwing some solder on, though--but I'm not quite sure where that should be done. Mind pointing me in the right direction? Here is the underside of the boiler room...

boilerroom.jpg

Thanks, skristof! Any idea what could be causing the points to skyrocket while while pulling the balls, though?

Boards look free of corrosion, and the scoring just kept going...but I actually never thought to wait until the end of nightmare 1 to see if that'd stop the scoring sequence (that's a good idea). You're spot on that the boiler room door should be open in Nightmare 1. I went in and took the lever off the boiler room entirely, and reattached with a firm attachment in the upright position. Fired up the machine and I'm back in business. Everything played fine. Still, I'm going to keep an eye on it because I'm not sure if something fell out of alignment on the boiler room door...or if it's just spotty on startup. I suppose I'll play off and on throughout the day and see if it's a recurrent problem--and if not maybe the boiler door lever just slipped again(?).

This is interesting. All my lamps are working, but I do have a couple that tweak out a bit from time to time (I have to rotate the socket on rare occasion if the lights aren't working). I wonder if those may be causing the problem? If (when) the game wigs out again this will be the first thing I follow up on.

The only light missing a socket is the 'coffee' lamp, but it's played without that the entire time I've had it. Thanks for the link!

Just an update in case anybody comes to this thread with the same issues down the road...

Thanks to someone far better at diagnosis than myself, I can confirm that my front left round smart switch was on the fritz! It was passing switch tests when I went through, but after removing the switch and testing over many, many games I can confirm that this was what caused my problems. I've put in an order for the replacement, and in the meantime am just living without it.

switch.jpg